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Surgery for Rodriguez, Resignation for Yankees

Alex Rodriguez has a bone impingement and a cyst in his left hip, which will require him to have surgery.Credit
Barton Silverman/The New York Times

NASHVILLE

It is an irrefutable fact: Every time Alex Rodriguez has hip surgery, the Yankees respond by winning a championship. Just ask the man who made the final putout of the 2009 World Series.

“What happened the last time ARod had hip surgery and started the season on the DL?” first baseman Mark Teixeira posted on his Twitter account Monday. “Oh yeah, he dominated and we won the WS!”

Of course, if serious hip surgery guaranteed World Series glory, teams would scramble to fill the operating rooms. A bigger reason for the Yankees’ last title is simple: Rodriguez was four years younger than he will be next fall, and he happened to get hot when it mattered most.

Rodriguez needs surgery again, this time on his left hip, and if he comes back in June, as the team hopes, he will be almost 38. He has declined every season since signing a 10-year, $275 million deal after winning the American League Most Valuable Player award in 2007, when his on-base plus slugging percentage was 1.067. Since then, the figure has dropped steadily: .965, .933, .847, .823, .783.

He was a shell in the postseason this year, and after Joe Girardi pinch-hit for him in Game 3, Rodriguez asked for an examination of his surgically repaired right hip, thinking it was causing his struggles at the plate. Wrong guess.

The problem was actually in the other hip, as Rodriguez discovered in his annual postseason checkup in November. This operation will take place around Jan. 1, after Rodriguez completes a strengthening program. It is more serious than the 2009 operation because Rodriguez has a bone impingement in addition to a torn labrum.

“It is a more complicated surgery with a longer recovery time because there is a little bit more that needs to be done, all of which is fixable,” General Manager Brian Cashman said, adding later, “At the same time, the older you are, the slower you’re going to recover, regardless.”

Photo

"I think once he's fixed, you'll certainly see a return to a player that's more than capable, and above average at that position," said Brian Cashman, the Yankees' general manager.Credit
Mark Humphrey/Associated Press

Credit Cashman with not pretending he has access to a time machine. The Rodriguez of old is not coming back. The best the surgery can do, Cashman acknowledged, is restore to Rodriguez the ability to play to his limited potential.

The injury, Cashman said, “is the strongest reason and the most likely reason that he wasn’t the player he was capable of being. And by fixing this, this will put him back in position to provide the maximum potential he has at that stage. What that is, I don’t know.”

Cashman added: “I think once he’s fixed, you’ll certainly see a return to a player that’s more than capable, and above average at that position.”

Last season, there were 22 players with 400 or more plate appearances who played at least half their games at third base. Rodriguez’s OPS ranked 12th of the 22, so with better health, in theory, he could indeed be above average.

But third base is not a position for the aged, even for great players. George Brett was mostly a first baseman by the time he turned 34. Mike Schmidt and Brooks Robinson were all but finished as impact players by their age-38 seasons. Chipper Jones just retired at 40.

The Yankees are bound to Rodriguez for five more seasons at $114 million, plus bonuses tied to career home run totals, a joyless pursuit of a record held by Barry Bonds, whose career peaked in his late 30s, just before the onset of drug testing. For many players, aging was easier back then.

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The Yankees used Eduardo Nunez at six positions last season, including nine games at third.Credit
Uli Seit for The New York Times

Rodriguez, of course, has admitted using steroids during baseball’s “loosey-goosey era,” as he once called it. If only the Yankees had known that in late 2007, they might not have given him the contract that so severely weighs them down.

It was all a fantasy: that Rodriguez could hold off the aging process; that there was nothing injected in his body that might lead to physical breakdown; that fans would flock to the ballpark and the merchandise counter and the television set to see him become the home run king. The Yankees got their championship, which should never be minimized. But now the decline of Rodriguez dominates the conversation.

“Alex is signed, obviously, going forward for five years, so we will have to withstand if there’s times down like this — the first three months of this year, which is the expectation,” Cashman said. “We’ll have to find ways to withstand it. One player doesn’t make a team, and so we have a full roster of guys plus our farm system behind that that’s going to have to fill in.”

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Yet the farm system is not providing low-cost high-impact position players. Only one player currently under 30 exceeded 100 plate appearances for the Yankees last year, and it was catcher Russell Martin, who just left to sign a two-year, $17 million contract with Pittsburgh. The Yankees did not match the offer.

So the lineup has holes at catcher and right field, plus two aging, injured stars on the left side of the infield in Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. The long-term contracts for Rodriguez, C. C. Sabathia and Teixeira hinder the flexibility of a team trying to get its 2014 payroll below $189 million, to avoid the crippling luxury-tax rates included in the new collective bargaining agreement.

That agreement was designed, like the ones before it, in part to make it harder for the Yankees to waltz into the playoffs every year. Somehow, except for 2008, they continue to find a way, a credit to their business model and pro scouting staff.

But on days like Monday, it is hard to focus on how good the Yankees have actually been. Just up ahead is a long, barren road with Rodriguez, who maybe, just maybe, can be above average again.

A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 2012, on Page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Surgery for Rodriguez, Resignation for Yankees. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe